After a tumultuous 2023, Marvel is ending 2024 reinvigorated and back on solid footing. Deadpool & Wolverine was a massive theatrical hit, and X-Men ’97, Echo, and Agatha All Along made for good television. After all that, the company had one more winner to put out this year: the NetEase-developed Marvel Rivals, a hero shooter both companies hope can compete with the likes of Overwatch and Apex Legends. And along with its general existence, part of what’s so interesting about the game is how damn good and different it looks, both on its own merits and compared to peers in the various spaces it inhabits.
For over a decade, triple-A games have leaned toward photorealistic graphics and art direction, superhero games included. The recent Spider-Man and Batman titles want you to feel like you’re playing a movie, so that means realistic recreations of familiar characters and locations made in a way that makes it all pop on your TV and looks great when you share photos online. So when Marvel Rivals was first revealed in March, it was a genuine surprise to see it not look realistic in the slightest. It’s a pretty colorful and fantastical game overall, taking visual inspiration from anime and ink-heavy comics instead of the exaggerated realism or Pixar-lite style previously seen in games including Apex and Overwatch. Looking at Rivals, you wouldn’t be wrong for seeing it and thinking Marvel had gone and quietly produced a show inspired by the likes of Arcane. That TV comparison isn’t made lightly; recent Marvel animation has opted to look familiar while still being distinct: whatever you think of the Spider-Verse movies, X-Men ’97, or the upcoming Spider-Man cartoon, you can’t say they’re visually interchangeable.
Appearances are everything for superheroes, and how they look is one of the first talking points when they go to other mediums. This is part of what ultimately did in Square Enix’s Marvel’s Avengers, where the realistic art style led to unfavorable comparisons between the game’s title heroes and their MCU counterparts. Without the need for movie synergy hanging over it, Marvel Rivals might have the most freedom afforded to any big budget Marvel game to date. It doesn’t just look different, it’s got a broader spectrum of heroes than the brand’s other big ensemble games. The Avengers game only had the opportunity to feature MCU mainstays and future headliners, while Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite famously lacked any X-Men since Marvel didn’t want to give too much promotion to Fox back then.
But once Disney acquired Fox, Marvel began to loosen up on its MCU-focused mandate. Midnight Suns featured top tier Avengers alongside a selection of unconventional B-listers like Magik, Robbie Reyes’ Ghost Rider, and Nico Minoru. Marvel Rivals’ launch heroes include a solid range of heavy hitters the general public’s used to seeing, plus more fan favorite characters and rising stars like Jeff the Shark and Peni Parker. And with a genuinely diverse selection of heroes on its hands, NetEase gets to have some fun: everyone’s got fresh, new looks that still make them recognizable, and what movie tie-in suits exist for players to buy translate extremely well to the game’s art style. (In some cases, it makes those movie suits look much better than in the film.) As it was with Overwatch back with its debut, folks have taken a shine to the Rivals roster, which has resulted in a lot of fan art and interest in seeing how future characters will look in this style.
There’s an argument to be made that NetEase chose Marvel Rivals‘ art style so players would get interested in spending money on in-game currency or the battle pass to get items like skins, outro animations, and so on. Cosmetics have been a key part of game monetization for years, and titles like Fortnite go viral whenever a new licensed character drops and players start posting about how they look doing an emote or wearing in-game clothing. This is just the reality we’re in, and one Rivals has no problem leveraging to get any and every set of eyes on it. A game’s presentation can go a long way—just ask Atlus, whose dazzling menus in Metaphor and Persona are enough to make players certain they’ll be in for a good time.
Visually, Marvel Rivals is constantly showing off, like it’s been waiting for the moment to do so. Every character gets a flashy Borderlands-style intro when you pick them in the main menu, and their MVP animations all end with a freeze frame meant to evoke comic books’ splash pages or a particularly great variant cover. Even when you wish a particular character would get nerfed to hell or removed entirely, it’s hard not to be endeared when seeing that work that’s gone into making them look like the star of their own adventure. They are stars, of course, and if they weren’t already, they very may well be thanks to this game. However long it exists, it’s already won by simply offering something new to see for Marvel fans and players who may not have any interest in hero shooters in the first place.
Marvel Rivals is out now for PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S.
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